In 1978 North Carolina enacted a change in the law to permit liquor-by-the-drink (LBD) for the first time since prohibition. This proposed project will utilize this situation as a natural experiment to test hypotheses concerning statistically significant impact on alcoholism and problem drinking as a result of this change in distilled spirits availability. This change from "brown bagging" to LBD produced an important alteration in the type of distilled spirits on-premise outlets. For the first time, public bars were established where few, if any, existed before. This project will employ an interrupted time series quasi-experimental design with switching replications, nonequivalent no-treatment control groups, and nonequivalent dependent variables, and ARIMA (autoregressive integrated moving average) modelling. Primary measures taken quarterly from 1968 to 1982 include: (a) alcoholism admissions for state and local treatment facilites, (b) cirrhotic mortality rate, (c) traffic accidents (including fatalities, a three-factor surrogate measure, and driver fatalities with measureable BAC levels), (d) distilled spirits consumption and overall ethanol consumption, and (e) the number of distilled spirits on-premise outlets. In addition, to further aid in and strengthen the interpretation of results of the ARIMA analysis for LBD counties, an identical time series analysis of a matched set of non-LBD counties in N.C. will be utilized as controls. A supplemental source of data for this project is a proposed follow-up to a survey of drinking behavior, reported problems, and attitudes conducted just prior to initiation of LBD but never replicated. As a significant added cost to data collection, this survey is shown as an optional part of the project. While studies have shown association between availability, apparent consumption and alcohol-related problems, they often do not provide information about the contribution of specific types of distilled spirits availability. There have been few opportunities to study natural experiments and even fewer studies of liquor-by-the-drink as a possible factor in rates of alcoholism and problem drinking. In addition, policymakers often lack good information from carefully designed research about the impact of specific types of distilled spirits availability on alcohol-related problems. This project seeks to contribute to both basic research and policy needs.